


How Harmony Faith Lane Worked Through Some Shit

by sinesteraglets



Category: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:14:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinesteraglets/pseuds/sinesteraglets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harmony's going to tell you about some things. Or she's going to make you figure it out on your own. Either way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Harmony Faith Lane Worked Through Some Shit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cathryn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cathryn/gifts).



> Beta by ncc_gqmf! Thank you!

How Harmony Faith Lane Worked Through Some Shit

 

\---

 

I did my makeup before the news crew came over. Right after I called the cops. That’s probably a good place to start, if we’re looking at the inner workings of Harmony Faith Lane. I did my makeup because you never know who can be watching (or you know exactly who can be watching) and <i>of course</i> there was going to be a news crew.  A guy in a robot suit broke into my condo.

 

That’s how my sister found my house, by the way. The news. After that, breaking in was easy because a dead robot had already done the work for her.

 

Just in case you were curious. There’s not always time to wrap everything up.

\---

 _The moment she decides to get out is the moment she realizes that she’s a little jealous. She can set her alarm to the sounds that the stairs make when he creeps up them in just_ that way _and at a certain point it’s not a matter of if or when, but—_

\---

 _  
_

“Why not?”

 

Harmony Faith Lane looks up from her issue of USA Today, not surprised to see Harry. He sits down across from her and reaches for her hash browns. She swats his hand away.

 

“You’re going to have to be specific, Harry.” He really doesn’t, but she doesn’t want to deal with it today. Tomorrow. Maybe they can deal tomorrow.

 

“Why not-”

 

“Why not get the Grand Slam and save myself sixty cents?”

 

“Harmony-”

 

“It’s too much food, Harry.” She leans forward, folding her paper down. “I can’t finish it all, and the guilt of leaving food behind on my plate—”

 

“Not using all the pig,” Harry helpfully supplies.

 

“Not using all the pig. Yes, thank you. Wasting the pancakes, the bacon, the metaphorical and literal pig – it’s not worth the saving the sixty cents. Let Denny’s have the sixty cents. It counterbalances the gum you’re going to steal from them later.”

 

Harry’s silent for a moment, like something that she’s said has really bothered him. Which it probably has.

 

“I don’t steal as much shit, these days. Mostly just pens from the bank.”

 

“Aren’t those usually attached by a chain?”

 

“Hence me stealing less of them.”

\---

 

Also. The thing that Harry did to convince me he wasn’t gay? Really didn’t convince me he wasn’t gay. Here – let me show you:

 

 _“I do not just go around kissing people.”_

 _“Uh-huh.”_

 _“I mean, I do – obviously. Your friend—”_

 _“Marleah! Fuck, Harry.”_

 _“Her and Perry and that’s pretty much it for me this month...”_

 _I don’t bother telling him that we kissed, because – because. Mind your own business._

 _“I love breasts.”_

 _“I don’t think they love you back,” Perry calls out, standing behind the trunk that it really looks like he was pushing a body into._

 _“They are just – a thing I really, really enjoy. It’s important to me that you know that.”_

 _“Fine.” It’s late, I’m tired. It’s fine._

 _“Really? You believe me?”_

I said that I did, then Perry said they had to move already, and then Harry kicked me out of his hotel room half-naked when I told him that I’d had sex with his best friend when we were sixteen years old. The one guy in school that Harry had begged me not to 'do any touchy naked type things' (read: fuck) with.

 

So, no. When I was standing on the street with my shoes off and crying on account of a boy that he’d known in high school, I did not believe that Harry Lockhart was entirely straight.

\---

 _  
_

_Harold the Great worries her, in a way that she’s come to ignore. Same way that she ignores the pretty obvious erection when she’s crying on his shoulder._

 _  
_

_She thinks about not saying goodbye to him, or leaving a note on his pillow sprayed with perfume. Instead, she catches his eye outside of the window of the AM/PM and gives him the saddest, smallest little wave._

\---

 

She doesn’t go back to the house, after the service. Perry offers to pick up a few of her sister’s things, and Harmony asks him to drop her off at the high school on her way there. She doesn’t ask Harry to come.

 

“Were there always Mountain Dew banners on the score board? I feel like we used to be a _little_ fucking classier.”

 

Standing behind the bleachers, Harmony reaches into Harry’s breast pocket, takes a cigarette, and pops it in her mouth.

 

“I think it used to be Mr. Pibb,” Harry mumbles, fishing a Zippo (she didn’t figure him for the Zippo type) out of his pocket and giving her a light.

 

Harmony leans her head against a support beam and closes her eyes.

 

“Harmony? You’re—”

 

Eyes still closed, Harmony reaches out and puts her hand over Harry’s mouth. She doesn’t need to see to do that – no one would.

 

“‘Go to hell, Jonny Gossamer,’ she told me. She’d poured herself into a seamless dress. From the look of it, she’d spilled some.”

\---

 

Harry keeps looking at me, in those months and weeks after it happens. Not in a stalking me, creepy sort of way. He has my number, I still do jobs for Perry sometimes – if we want to see each other, he calls.

 

But we’ll be out – eating, drinking (only one drink, though), walking – and he’ll just stop the normal human interaction that we’re having and stare. The first time, I punch him in the shoulder. The second time, I stare back. Now I just talk through it. A few examples:

 

 _Two weeks after we get back from the funeral, after Perry and I meet about a job:_

 

“Did you ever staple your thumb as a kid? Just to see what it felt like? And don’t look at me like that, I didn’t do anything to your thumbs.”

 

He huffs, and goes back to the work that even Perry admits he’s decent at.

 

 _A week after that, any given diner:_

 

“You do this shit where you think you’re being a nice guy, but actually you’re being horrible. Calling all of the women in L.A. sluts, for instance. It doesn’t make you a moral guy by comparison. Acting offended if I offer to give you a hand job—”

 

“You’re offering to give me a hand job?”

 

“Freaking out over shit I did when I was 16 years old. Leaving me standing on a sidewalk without my shoes on.”

 

“You didn’t put your shoes on?”

 

“I was upset!”

 

“Harmony—”

 

“Keep talking and I’m going – well. I already cut your finger off. Just stop talking, Harry."

 

Sorry, that’s a bad example, seeing as how I was the one who wound up leaving that conversation first. But I wanted to let you know that once my sister’s things were taken care of and people weren’t shooting at us, I let Harry know why he was an asshole. There are millions of reason why Harry’s an asshole, but I picked the ones that affected me most immediately.

 

 _Three months after that, because some things take time. Harry’s new apartment:_

 

“You don’t have any closets, Harry.”

 

I walk around, tracing the white walls with my fingertips.

 

“I don’t get how anyone gets an apartment without a closet. Where do you put wrapping paper? Or your vacuum. You’ve got carpet, you need a vacuum. Plus there are your actual clothes, which you don’t—”

 

“It’s through the bathroom.” And Harry always looks fidgety, but now he looks extra fidgety. “It’s a walk in. Which I don’t need. But – you know. Maybe someday.”

 

That’s the last time that talking my way through it works. Because now? Now, talking my way through it only leads to this new place, where Harry seems like he’s waiting for something that I don’t like him assuming I have.

\---

 

 _What follows is a break in the pattern, but she was too private to give you this one on her own. Even if everyone reading at home has already seen her half naked. That’s the thing about actors:_

 _  
_

_It was Harmony’s 35 th birthday. She didn’t say anything. Harry came over. She looked through the peephole and saw that he had a white box, so she didn’t answer. He stared at her through the peephole and phrases kept popping into her head that didn’t belong there – “eyes like molasses”, “soft as steel” – real dime store shit that even Jonny wouldn’t touch._

 _  
_

_Harry smiled. He flipped open the top of the box and held it to the peephole for inspection._

 _  
_

_“Happy Bar Mitzvah, Harmony Lane.”_

 _  
_

_She took a step back, breathing deeply. She looked down at her socks. Okay._

 

Harmony flings open the door, with a finger pointed out.

 

I smile, because – none of your business. I smile.

 

“Damn it, Harry. I knew you wanted me to be a man.”


End file.
